A Personal Poetic Critique

I entered the following poem into a local contest held by a regional writers group I joined recently.  There are just shy of 200 members.  The ‘rules’ for entering a poem were that it had to have the word heart/hearts somewhere in the poem at least once, and the length should be between 8 and 16 lines.

Now, I’m not a poet.  I love poetry and I dabble a little here and there but I can’t even truly call myself an amateur… an armchair amateur at best, maybe.  But I decided that I’d enter the contest ‘for kicks.’  One of the characters in my novel is a poet and I desperately needed the practice; so with a smaller pool of contestants entering, I thought I might stand half a chance at getting an honourable mention (I never expect to place in a top 3 – especially when poetry is involved).

I didn’t win.  I didn’t even get an honourable mention.  I’m not surprised.  I knew there were flaws ahead of time, but I hoped they’d work for me.

What good and what ‘bad’ (needs improvement) do you see?  I’d honestly like to know – I want to see if I am able to read my own pluses and minuses correctly.

Thanks!

Shattered Mirror 2 by wolfrain319

Naiveté

The glint of light from fractured metal

Refracts my shattered soul;

Its green walls and white chambers

Scream what my heart refuses to admit.

I am not the first, nor will I be the last

But I am the now and the not so distant future:

Broken beyond repair?

Frozen in this moment?

If tomorrow exists, where did my yesterdays go?

With no dream left wanting I wait

For the blood to return to my head, to my heart

I wait to make sense of today.

–

a poem by M.J. Moores

Categories: Poetry

Tags: advice, amateur, help, poetry